Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been a known function of transmitting image data generated on a client computer to a facsimile (fax) machine via a local area network (LAN) and executing a fax transmission from the fax machine. In this case, a fax transmission destination can be specified by a user on the client computer.
There has also been a known function of notifying the fax machine only of a destination specified by the user and transmitting, via fax, image data generated by reading a document on the fax machine to the specified destination, without preparing image data on the client computer (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-288625).
However, in the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-288625, when a scanner unit of the fax machine is in use or when the fax machine is executing a document reading-and-transmission job according to an instruction from another client computer, the fax machine does not receive a new document reading-and-transmission job. More specifically, in the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-288625, there has been a problem of user-unfriendliness because whether a new document reading-and-transmission job is executable is determined by a use state of the fax machine by another user.
Further, in the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-288625, when the fax machine almost simultaneously receives document reading-and-transmission jobs from different client computers, the fax machine transmits image data generated by reading a document to the destination specified by the job received first. Therefore, the image data may be transmitted to a destination not intended by the user, i.e., a destination specified by a document reading-and-transmission job input by another client computer, causing a security problem.